State Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, released a statement early Wednesday morning to tell residents that the current state of emergency likely won’t improve for a few more days.
Denton County, along with most of the state, has been experiencing mass power outages since Monday morning amid some of the coldest temperatures ever recorded here. Some people have been without power for hours or days, while others have had their power turned on and off constantly since Monday. Those without heat have dealt with temperatures reaching the freezing point in their home and freezing pipes, with few answers or good news coming from the power utilities. Those who do have power and and water are being asked to conserve their use, due to low supply.
Parker said in his statement that he wanted to give residents a “realistic expectation” about when things may return to normal.
“The simple truth is, the situation isn’t improving yet as temperatures remain below freezing,” Parker said. “In fact, after extensive communications between state and local officials with your area providers, I am going to say brace yourself for this to continue for at least the next couple of days.”
ERCOT announced Wednesday morning that overnight, it was able to restore about 3,500 MW of load (about 700,000) households, but it lost the ability to import about 600 MW due to a storm in the midwest. As of 9 a.m., it is instructing local utilities to shed 14,000 MW of load, about 2.8 million households. About 46,000 MW of generation was forced off the system during the winter storms; of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar.
Parker said that officials around Denton County are working continuously to address challenges and share information best they can. Parker said that once temperatures rise and power is restored, he will be telling residents’ stories and working to prevent a disaster like this from happening again.
“Make no mistake, our state must be better prepared, and I am fully supportive of investigative actions into ERCOT and long-term solutions to protect our electrical grid by the legislature,” Parker said in his statement. “These outages are absolutely unacceptable and getting to the root causes is a top priority during this current legislative session and beyond. We cannot expect citizens, like you, to endure these situations and live without basic predictability in your electric service. This will be thoroughly addressed!”
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